He beat up wives and girlfriends and deliberately sabotaged professional engagements. On stage he was lionized, on screen he was adored, but in life he continued to lash out at those around him. He was wracked with anger, emotional pain and insecurity - demons from his youth that wouldn’t leave him no matter how rich and famous he got. His consumption of drugs and alcohol knew no limits. His behaviour had begun to intensify in its destructiveness. Indeed, some things were taken from his house in those first critical hours.Īlthough shocked, those closest to Richard Pryor had seen something like this coming. Unsympathetic acquaintances and certain family members started eyeing up his possessions. Pryor was then taken to Sherman Oaks Hospital, where, it was generally thought (at least by his family and business associates), he’d be spending his last few hours alive. Eventually, two cops managed to stop him long enough for an ambulance to arrive.
#Richard pryor icon cast skin
Ignoring pleas from passersby, he staggered around the San Fernando Valley suburb for several minutes while his clothes melted into his skin and the flesh on his upper body bubbled and blistered like meat in a wok. Before his guests could rescue him, he jumped out of the window of his house in Northridge, California, and ran down Parthenia Street in a ball of flames. Early in the evening, out of his mind on crack cocaine, the comedian covered himself in rum and set it alight.
Richard Pryor should have died on June 9, 1980.
We salute this comic genius and cultural game-changer by reposting Julian Upton’s powerful profile of Pryor’s end-times, first published in Bright Lights in 2007.Ī genius self-destructs, with a little help from Hollywood Editor’s Note: Richard Pryor died on this date, December 10, 2005, nine days shy of his sixty-fifth birthday.
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